I’ve only been back to Hogwarts for a week! One week and already I wish summer were here. My last class of the week, History of Magic with the very ‘interesting’ Professor Henrick Henwick was crawling by, and I’d had enough.

But there I was, taking notes on wizarding bloodlines, which is quite pointless. When am I ever going to need to know anything about my ancestors?

As Professor Henwick mumbled through his lecture, going off on tangents only I could follow, my mind and eyes began to wander. I surveyed the classroom, noticing which of my classmates were asleep and which were pretending to take notes.

My eyes landed on Malfoy. I mean, er, Scorpius. I still can’t believe he got all defensive when I called him Malfoy on the second day of first year. He insists to this day, that I call him Scorpius, because and I quote. ‘We’re in the same bloody house, Rose! No need for formalities.’ Well, whatever, I’ll call him Scorpius, since he seems to have no problem calling me Rose.

He looked up from his paper and spotted me looking at him. He smirked and looked back down. How dare he smirk at me?!? The buttfaced miscreant had the audacity to smirk at me.

I threw him my dirtiest look and went back to paying attention to my professor drone on and on. Henrick Henwick had replaced the last History of Magic Teacher, a ghost by the name of Binns, after an unfortunate incident in which a windstorm blew him away. Some say that the old ghost professor still gives lectures out in the middle of the woods. Henwick wasn’t near as boring as the old ghost, but he tended to go on and on and on about minute details concerning the smallest bits of factual history. It’s a wonder any of us passed our exams with all the filler we had to sift through.

As his lecture came to a close, he called us to attention and explained our newest homework assignment.

“We’ve been learning about bloodlines all week,” he explained, “so this assignment should be easy. Trace your genealogy back as far as it can go and put a mark by those in your family tree who possessed magical blood!” The enthusiasm with which he described our homework made it clear that he expected us to be happy with the assignment.

I groaned. As part of one of the only pureblood wizarding families in Britain, this task would take me forever.

“Sir?” Scorpius Malfoy asked, his blonde fringe hanging low over his eyes. “What about those of us who are purebloods?” He brushed his hair out of his eyes and glanced in my direction. He winked at me before looking at our red-faced professor.

“W- Wel,l M- Mr. Malfoy,” he stuttered, as he always does when speaking to Scorpius. I wasn’t sure if he had compromising pictures and was blackmailing our teacher, or if Professor Henwick just found him that intimidating. “J- just go back to the 1500’s?”

Henrick Henwick always posed assignments as questions when faced with Scorpius Malfoy. I’m slightly jealous of this particular skill. Not that I admire anything Scorpius does or says or anything like that. But it is a useful skill to have.

With that, the lecture was over. As I gathered my things, approaching footsteps caught my attention.

“So Rose,” Scorpius began, his eyes shining like silver beacons in the night. I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Scorpius has amazing eyes, and I couldn’t help but feel weak when he looked at me.

Scorpius brushed his hair aside. “Are you going to be working on this assignment later?” he asked as he picked up my books.

I looked at him questioningly. “What?” I asked lamely.

“The genealogy assignment…” Scorpius asked as he cocked his head to the side. He looked so adorable when he did that.

“Oh um, yeah, I guess I’ll have to.” I didn’t want to leave this assignment just sitting around since I had 500 years of family members to wade through.

“Well I was thinking that maybe we could work on it together,” he finished and smiled at me, waiting for my answer to his unspoken question. Scorpius is a very clever lad. He never outright asks a girl out; he’s smooth about it.

“Are you asking me out?” I stammered and blushed at the same time.

“Erm, no…I was just thinking that we both come from pureblood families, so we could help each other out.” A frown line formed between his brow and I nearly died of embarrassment.

“Oh!” I squeak, ‘Sure…I- I’ll meet you i- in the common room? After dinner?” I finished and tried to hide as much of my face as possible with my hair.

Scorpius looked at me as if he feared for my sanity and nodded, “See you later.” He walked away looking sexy as hell and I stood lamely in the empty classroom.

“Oh great,” I said aloud, “You just made a total fool of yourself, Rose.” I sighed and slowly made my way to the common room to dispense of my belongings before dinner.

**

It hadn’t even been ten minutes into dinner before I was a nervous wreck. I could see Scorpius with a bunch of his friends, calm, cool, and collected. And there I was sitting alone, poking my fork at a single potato.

“Ugh, this is stupid,” I said to myself before standing and leaving the Great Hall. I’ve gained a rather interesting reputation as the girl who talks to herself. I don’t know why…but I always seem to think out loud, especially when I’m concentrating on an important project. That’s why I was too nervous to eat. What if I started talking to myself when I was doing my homework with Scorpius? What if he thought I was a freak?

As I made my way to the common room, I thought of all the things that could go horribly wrong on the date. No, no Rose this is not a date! I thought to myself. I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t even realize I needed to say the password in order to get into the common room.

“Erm…” I was saved by a few of my dorm mates heading down late to dinner. I went to fetch my bag and books and brought them down to the common room.

“I might as well get a head start on this assignment.” Speaking to myself is okay so long as I’m alone. I looked around quickly to make sure I was, in fact, alone.

“Alright let’s do this.” I took out some parchment and a few spare quills and got to work.

I contemplated how to go about this; I had so many relatives I didn’t know where to start. In the end, I decided to start with the latest generation of my family.

My eldest cousin is… Victoire. I wrote her name down and put a little star by it. She was definitely a witch, and part veela thanks to Aunty Fleur. Aunty Fleur was married to Uncle Bill. I wrote their names down and connected them with Victoire.

Victoire’s a right bitch to me…but she loves Teddy, and he seems to love her, too. Teddy is my god….cousin? Maybe? I don’t know, but he was part of the family long before I was born. He and Victoire are going to end up married one of these days so I just connected them early. I drew a line between their names and continued on.

Louis is Victoire’s only brother. He’s twelve years old and he began his first year of Hogwarts last September. I put a star next to his name and smiled; he was sorted into Ravenclaw and I adore him. He’s quite shy and doesn’t talk to many people outside his immediate group of friends. He and Victoire don’t get along as well as I’d hoped; she used to be quite nasty to him, until Uncle Bill told her to ‘shut her big mouth and give her brother some respect, damnit’. Way to go Uncle Bill.

That’s it for my Uncle Bill’s children. Next on the list are my cousins Quil and Faber; they’re the sons of my Uncle Charlie and my Aunt Roxanne. They’re…strange, just plain strange. There’s no other category to put them in, I swear. If you looked in the dictionary under strange you would find Quil and Faber right under Lorcan and Lysander. They’re the sons of my sort of Aunt Luna and Uncle Rolf. They put the‘s’ in strange or some such nonsense like that.

They’re all decent boys, but when the four of them find you hanging mistletoe at Christmas and demand that you remove it lest nargles infest your brain…you begin to fear for their sanities. When those two red heads join with the blond twins, hilarity and much strangeness ensues.

Quil and Faber are both in Hufflepuff, though Quil is in fifth year while Faber is in second. The Scamander twins are in fourth year in Ravenclaw. No matter how strange they may act, they’ve each got enough brains to take over the world someday. God help us when that day comes.

My cousin Molly is up next. She’s the only child of my Uncle Percy and his wife Penny, and she’s in Hufflepuff. She’s the only female cousin I have that has brown hair, but to be fair, there are natural streaks of red mixed in. I don’t really hang out a lot with Molly, but from the few times we’ve actually spoken she seems like a decent girl.

My Uncle Fred died during the war. I never knew him, but Uncle George talks about him all the time. They were twins, and my Uncle George said they shared a special bond and they were very close. My Uncle George gets sad when he talks about Uncle Fred. The only person who can cheer him up is his daughter, my cousin Wilfred.

She has a knack for knowing just what to say at the right moment to make everyone in the room laugh. Uncle George named her; I don’t know what Aunt Angelina was thinking. You see, my Uncle George wanted to name his first born child after his brother Fred. He wasn’t exactly planning on his first child being a girl.

He really did try, I swear he did, to find a girl’s name that was close to Fred. He even looked in several baby books, but he didn’t really realize that the name he picked was a boy’s name. Suffice it to say, wherever Wilfred goes, she has to constantly tell people that she is indeed a girl and that her father is an idiot.

To be honest, Wilfred is the biggest tomboy I’ve ever met. She plays Quidditch for Gryffindor, and has since she was in second year. She’s a damn good chaser, but really she plays all positions with ease. She hardly wears makeup and her red hair is always pulled back into a ponytail or piled on top of her head in a messy bun. She’s one fifth year Gryffindor that I don’t want to mess with. She’s tough as nails and very defensive of her family.

Logically, next would be my family. I’m Rose, in case you didn’t know that, you silly piece of parchment. My parents are Ron and Hermione, their lines connected to me. I’m in my fourth year at Hogwarts and I’m a proud member of Ravenclaw. I inherited most of my traits from my mum, and my brains are definitely one of them. Dad was a little disappointed that I wasn’t in Gryffindor, but since I was very small I’ve craved knowledge. I always knew which house I’d end up in, even if it was disappointing to one of my parents.

The door to the common room opened, and I jerked my head around so fast I nearly spun off my chair. But I don’t think anyone saw, and just in case they did I turned it into a sexy little dance. Okay, maybe not so sexy.

Louis walked up to me and handed me a note saying that Scorpius would be late for our Homework date. I mean meeting. Homework meeting. This was not a date.

Scorpius is a fourth year Ravenclaw too. I don’t know much about his background other than what I’ve read in books, but I do know that his father sent him a howler on the second day of school. The entire Great Hall got to hear how disappointed his father was and how Scorpius had dishonored the name of Malfoy by not being in Slytherin.

When the note finally burst into flames, Scorpius had looked around and saw every face in the Hall staring at him. He brushed the soot from the table and his shoulders began to shake. I thought he was crying at first, but soon he couldn’t hold in the laughter anymore. He laughed so loud a few of the other first years jumped. I love the way he laughs…

Anyway, from that day to this, whenever someone made a remark about his being in Ravenclaw all he would do was shrug and give a half smile and say, “Who knows, maybe the sorting hat got tired of actually sorting and just put me in a house willy nilly.”

But I’m letting myself get distracted. Next on the list is my little brother Hugo. He’s a third year Hufflepuff and very quiet. He tends to keep to himself, and he hardly speaks to anyone. I don’t even know that much about him. He rarely speaks to me and even when I ask him questions he gives me a short reply. I don’t know, sometimes I think I don’t know him at all.

There’s hope for him still! He does hang out with Astra Longbottom. She’s such a dear. She’s one of three, or what I mean to say is that she was born a triplet. Her brother Aiden is in Ravenclaw, though he’s a year younger than me so we don’t see much of each other. Astra is in Hufflepuff with Hugo and her sister Aurora is in Slytherin.

I guess that’s it for my family; I only have a few more cousins left! Yay! James is up next. Big headed Quidditch Captain that he is, he’s as brave as a lion and the sorting hat put him in Gryffindor. His father and mother were also Gryffindors. I love my Uncle Harry and my Aunt Ginny, they’re always so nice to me, unlike James who treats me like I’m four years old. Grrr James… He’s always climbing tall buildings, or jumping off bridges and who knows what else! He’s a year older than me and is a constant annoyance to his brother Albus.

Albus is in my year, though for some reason, he’s in Slytherin. This caused a giant uproar during our sorting. Many of the older kids shouted that it had to be a mistake, and that he was meant to be in Gryffindor. But no, the sorting hat knows his heart and put Albus where he belongs, I guess.

Albus and I used to be very close, even when we first came to Hogwarts. We would hang out together all the time. But that changed when Albus began that stupid mentoring program. The professors thought it would be a good idea if one of the older students was paired with one of the younger students in their house. This way the older student could assist the younger and this was supposed to promote unity within the house.

In Albus’s second year, he was paired with a first year, Ara Malfoy. Yeah Scorpius’s younger brother. I don’t know why they were paired with each other, Albus hasn’t told me the story. But they have been close friends ever since, and I’ve been left on the sidelines by Al.

But, I digress. Their younger sister Lily is in Hufflepuff with Hugo. She’s 13 years old but she pretends she’s younger. She is particularly fond of painting her nails and braiding her hair into pigtails. She refuses to grow up and reminds me more each day of a fictional character I read about once.

I finished connecting all my cousins to their parents and sat back and looked at my work. I’d been at it an hour and I only had two generations on the page. I slammed my head into the desk ,when a voice behind me called my name.

“Rose? Are you okay?” Scorpius walked over, his arms laden with books and parchment.

“Ye-yeah I’m fine.” I sat up and rubbed my forehead. I could feel a lump forming and I prayed to god I could find a decent potion to fix it before classes on Monday.

“Are you ready to get to work?” He asked as he sat down and organized his things.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.”

**

AN: Hey guys!! What did you think of my first chapter? Good? Bad? Beautiful? Let me know in a review and you get a cookie!

This is my first attempt at a novel length fanfiction, first person, and my first attempt at writing Next Gen. Lots of firsts!